That really is a tricky question. I'm told the fan is alot less louder then the 5600 version, which sounded like a turbine. If you can find a machine at the store or something with a 5900 hooked up already, and think the sound is decent, but the geforce. Radeon STILL SUCK at driver updates. Till they manage to do the one every month or so that nVidia do, forget ATI. They get under my skin. Awesome card, crap support.

For Driver support you cant really go wrong with Nvidia. Radeon owners are always the first to complain of texture/polygon related bugs in most games.

That being said, the next geneartion of games all seem to favor ATI immensely. HL2 at e3 supposedly ran on a Radeon, and so does Doom 3.

Since we are in summer and the lack of new games is as usual at a low, unless your need for a killer gfx card is seriously urgent, I'd hold back and wait till said games get released this fall. Not only will you know which cards are better supported, they will most likely be a lot cheaper (although they are pretty admittedly pretty cheap right now. :p).

Here's what you do. You take each card and you throw them against the wall, whichever card sticks is the best one. Or is that used to tell if spagehtti noodles are done? hmmm well you better not do this cuz it will probably break them. So, just get a magic 8 ball they never fail.:cool guy:

Better to wait a few months till the big games come out. Like around November/December. If you're planning to not spend alot of money, the Geforce Ti4800 is cheaper, at least from the places I've seen, then the ATI 9700pro. If you're planning to spend a stackful of money, grab the 9800pro. By far the better card of the lot.

Remember Doom 3 is a long way off yet. They'll optimize it for the ATI card or they'll lose half their audience from complaints. ATI cards are much more popular now. Its just where AMD was with Intel a couple years back. Strong.